Erik is a baseball fan who has been attending baseball games and snagging baseballs regularly since 2008.

5-30-09 PNC Park

Today was the first of three Skyblast dates throughout the summer at PNC Park. Basically its an hour long concert/fireworks show. The bands are always “B” List bands, with past bands being Smash Mouth, Styx, Live, PovertyNeck Hill Billies, etc. The band tonight was the Zac Brown Band.

The stadium was sold out, so there would be some more competition than usual during batting practice. I attended this game with my wife. We were the 4th and 5th people in line. Unfortunately, by the time the gates opened, the 3 people ahead of us had swelled to 11 through the process of sparing/cutting. There went any chance for Easter Eggs out the window.

After about 5 minutes of batting practice, I got ball #1 from Ian Snell. Ian gets a lot of crap for his inconsistencies, but he’s one of my favorite Pirates. He’s definitely not stingy when it comes to giving away baseballs, so you have to respect that.

One of the groups that came up was mostly lefties, so I abandoned left field and went into foul ball territory. STATISTICS:Game: 5 Balls (3 hit, 2 thrown)Season: 135 Balls (60 hit, 58 thrown, 17 device)Games: 27 Games (23 with BP, 4 without)Average: 5.00 Balls Per GameCareer: 301 BallsAttendance: 37,167 (sell-out)

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